Dark Awakenings
by R-I-C-A-R-D
Summary: Inspired by the Vampire: Bloodlines PC game. The first few nights of a newly sired Kindred, as she is sent on a trial by the new Prince.
1. Mr Dark and Mysterious

Inspired by the PC game Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. Something I put together to pass the time.

1. Mr Dark and Mysterious

"Vampires?" I said to the tall, well dressed fellow at the bar. Up until that point in the conversation, I was actually toying with the idea of letting him get me into bed. Then he started in with that shit about vampires. Honestly, as if there aren't enough goths, emos and fucking headcases in the city already, I had to be unfortunate enough to have one chatting me up.

He was quite good looking, if you tend to go for the dark and mysterious look. His skin seemed a little pale but he'd told me he worked night-shift as a guard at the local general hospital and hadn't seen the sun for a while. At the time, that had seemed reasonable.

His eyes, so dark they were nearly black had met my blue ones from across the dancefloor. Yes, it was one of those, 'their eyes met across a crowded room' moments. For some reason, I felt _compelled_ to go to him, to talk to him, just to _be near him_. I've since learned that's one of the little tricks vamps like to use. It makes their prey come to them instead of them having to bother hunting it down. Isn't that convenient?

So we got to talking about this and that. The more I spoke to him, the more it felt as though we'd known each other our entire lives. Should come as no surprise that that's _another_ of their little tricks; the whole you know me, I'm your old friend from such and such. Come over here to this nice dark corner and we'll get...intimate. Of course, when a vamp or 'Kindred' as they like to call themselves talk about intimacy, they usually mean sucking you almost dry until you're almost as pale as they are.

It was the night of my friend Lauren's twenty-fifth birthday. All us girls - Lauren, Sarah, Katie and myself - I'm Morgan, just so you know - were _supposed_ to meet up at some fancy new bar in town. Only we get our wires horribly crossed, they ended up over there and I ended up here. By the time I thought about getting out of there and going to meet them, I'd already been reeled in by Mr Dark and Mysterious. Even now, I know almost nothing about him except that he was a Toreador. It could have been worse, I could have been grabbed by a Nosferatu coming out of a sewer. I've only ever seen them once or twice, but fuck me, they're ugly sons of bitches. You seriously do _not_ want to find yourself being Embraced by one of them. Of course, they claim the same thing about the other Clans.

So, not quite against my will I'm talking to Mr D & M when he says something about vampires being real. I'm all like, "Yeah, right and so's the tooth fairy. Oh and werewolves."

"No," he said, "It's all true. And I can prove it."

"Uh...huh," I said and I suddenly found it quite difficult, impossible, really to look away from him. I began to suspect he'd slipped something into my vodka and orange. He slipped his arm around my waist and gently guided me towards the door. Oh, but _that_ was so not gonna happen. With an effort of will I didn't know I was capable of, I managed to break free and began to run for the exit. Smack into a group of slutty little whores who were dancing around half naked. One of them turned, clawed me in the face with her fingernails and said, "Outta my way, bitch!"

Oh, and wasn't that the pot calling the kettle black. By the time I disentangled myself from them, Mr D & M had a hand on his shoulder and was spinning me around. I tried to avoid his gaze, but God help me, he was too strong. He gently ran a forefinger along me cheek where the little skank-girl had clawed me. His fingertip came away stained with my blood. He slipped the finger into his mouth and sighed in pleasure.


	2. What, no turning into a bat?

2. What, no turning into a bat?

After that, things get kinda blurry. All I know for certain is that when I woke up a few days...nights later, Mr D & M was gone, I had a really sickening feeling in my stomach and a sudden need to _feed._I opened my eyes and found myself in an unfamiliar room. I was lying curled up on a double bed. I raised my head and saw an identical bed next to me. There was also a colour television, CRT not an LCD or plasma as well as the sort of phone you'd find in a hotel room. The hum of an air conditioner came to me and it was one of those ones that you needed a room key to activate. I was in a hotel, all right. I sat up and a godawful wave of dizziness washed over me. A thumping headache started up behind my eyes, like some bass player from hell was rehearsing inside my head and using my skull as the amplifier. The strange hunger rose in me again. Something was seriously messed up here.

OK, I thought, think this through. You're lying on a bed in a strange hotel room, and for a wonder, you're _not _naked. This is a definite improvement over the last time you woke up in a strange hotel room. You have a headache that's kinda-sorta like a hangover headache except you know _instinctively_ that it isn't. You know that if you could just _feed_, it would go away. And so would the bizarre feeling in your stomach. Feed? Fine, dial for fuckin' pizza then.

I looked around for my purse. Please don't let me have been robbed on top of everything else. Everything else what? I tried to think about how I had gotten here and nothing was coming except for the image of a guy licking his finger. I shuddered.

"Looking for this?" a voice asked from elsewhere in the room.

"Fuck!" I shouted. Yes, not very ladylike but this is the twenty first century, ladylike behaviour was taken out the back and shot, execution style, years ago.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to alarm you," the voice belonged to woman who appeared to be about my own age, twenty-eight, though I pass myself off as twenty-five. It's strange isn't it how young girls try so hard to pass themselves off as being older than they are so they can get into bars and clubs yet once they get close to the big three zero they try to look as though they're younger.

She _looked_ around twenty-eight only I knew, again _instinctively_ that she was far older than she appeared. How I knew that I didn't want to know. She was holding the purse out in one pale-skinned hand. What is with all these albino-types suddenly coming out of the woodwork? She was wearing faded denim jeans, black leather boots with a modest heel and a white shirt and leather jacket. A she tossed the purse to me, the jacket moved enough to show me a holster holding a pistol.

It looked like a big pistol. If she were a man, I'd think she was overcompensating for something.

Her hair was a dark red and hung to her shoulders, her eyes a deep green and she had a fine dusting of freckles over her nose.

I grabbed the purse out of the air and quickly went through it. Wonder of wonders number two, all my cash and cards were still there. Ms Pale Skin was quite the honest person.

"I had to go through your things to find out who you are. Hello, Morgan. My name is Amy."  
_Yeah, sure it is_, I thought but didn't say. She could call herself Mary Magdalene if it made her life any easier. I held out a hand that seemed to have lost a bit of its tan. Something was really off here. She shook my hand with a firm grip.

"I'm sure you have many questions but we don't have a lot of time. There's only two hours until dawn. I should have woken you earlier but I felt you needed all the rest you can get. Your life just became...complicated."

"How so?"

Amy crossed the room from her position near the small bathroom with an unearthly kind of grace. She sat on the bed next to me and said, "There's no easy way to say this but three nights ago you met Alex," Oh so _that_was his name, "And quite in violation of Camarilla law, he Embraced you. You are one of us now."

"Wha? You lost me after 'you met Alex.' Honey, you better start making some sense or-" I cut myself off. What was I doing, making idle threats to some woman who was carrying a handcannon?

"It is difficult to explain and we have little time. I was asked to watch over you and ensure you learn the laws of our kind so that you do not meet your sire's fate. I do hope you didn't get attached to him."

"Alright look, I have a bitch of a headache, I feel like something out of _Alien_ is gonna burst out of my chest and I can't think straight."

"The headache and the hunger I can easily rectify." She spoke like some old lady. I pictured an old bird from the last century trapped in the body of a 21st century girl.

Amy crossed to the small fridge in the hotel room and opened it to reveal several bags of red liquid. She removed one and handed it to me. "Drink," she said.

I held up the bag. One unit whole blood, it read. I gave a little scream and dropped it, covering my face with my hands.

Amy sighed, "And you'd been doing so well up until now. We don't have time for you to adjust." Holding me down with an unnatural strength, she forced my mouth open and poured the blood down my throat. My new instincts took over and I gulped hungrily. It wasn't as good as I knew fresh blood would be but _damn_ it felt good.

And just like that, the demon bassist was gone, evicted, and the writhing in my stomach eased off.

"How do you feel?" Amy asked.

I felt more alive than I had felt before. My senses had sharpened. Colours seemed more vibrant and sounds seemed crisper. "I feel...good." I said. In truth, I felt as though I wanted to find the owner of the heart I could hear beating nearby and say 'hi.'

"That should tide you over until you can find a warm body."  
"There's somebody just down the hall,"  
"Too public. That's rule one. Never, under pain of death, reveal any aspect of your true nature to the wider world, the preservation of what we call the Masquerade. That means, no feeding on people or animals," I gagged at the thought, "whilst there are witnesses and no use of your supernatural abilities either."  
"Abilities?"  
"Yes. Kindred possess many powers, which we call 'disciplines' each bloodline, has over the ages, come to specialise, if you like in only a few of each. We Toreador possess heightened perceptions, the ability to charm or terrify others by our mere presence and the ability to move far faster than any mortal can."

I blinked slowly. I would have thought she was completely off her rocker and just yanking my chain if I hadn't already experienced the enhanced senses. "What, no turning into a bat?"

Amy smiled slightly and said, "No." Then she arose in a single smooth motion and headed for the door. I followed.

In the hallway, a man and woman were busy screwing each other senseless and a coke dealer was trading drugs for cash. It was that kind of hotel. "Nice place, what your bosses didn't come across with the penthouse?"

"This hotel, such as it is, serves the Camarilla as a safehouse for those in need of it," she meant me.  
We headed towards the lobby and I asked her, "That's the second time you're mentioned this 'Camarilla' is that like some company?"  
"The Camarilla is the largest sect of Kindred in the world. We strive to continue the old traditions as well as prevent the knowledge of our existence from reaching the human population. Humans have been quite effective in the past at utter genocide."

"You said 'sect.' There are others?" See, I learn quick. Aren't you proud?  
"The main ones that concern us at the moment are the Anarchs and the Sabbat."  
"Who comes up with these names?" I asked and she shrugged.

"The Sabbat are vampires who seek to destroy the Camarilla," that'd be me, again, "And subjugate humankind." Coming from anybody else, a word like 'subjugate' would have made the speaker sound like an up themselves know it all. Amy managed to avoid that.

"So I'm guessing these Sabbat aren't the type you want to take home to your mother."  
"Quite. The Anarchs on the other hand are mostly misguided youths who seek to rebel against the laws and traditions. Of course that does not stop them from seeking our help when it suits them. Mostly they are members of clan Brujah and Gangrel. Although there are members from all of the clans."  
"Bloodlines? Clans? What is this, like the Bloods and the Crips?"  
"Please. Millenia ago, the original bloodlines branched off to form the ones we know of today." By now we were out of the hotel and Amy was unlocking the doors of a Chevy Impala, kinda like the one in the TV show Supernatural. Only this one was red instead of black. We got in and Amy gunned the engine. The loud roar suggested somebody had been doing a bit of work under the bonnet. We roared off as she explained more about the different Camarilla bloodlines.

"There are the Toreador, we are the most connected to human existence and have a deep affinity for the arts," and loud cars, I thought, as she continued her brief run down on the Camarilla clans - Ventrue, Brujah, Gangrel, Toreador, Tremere, Nosferatu, Malkavian. The names rattled around inside my skull and eventually clicked into place.


	3. Mythbusters: Vampire Special Edition

3. Mythbusters: Vampire Special Edition

As she finished talking about the various bloodlines she pulled the car into the underground lot of a large apartment building. "This is where I reside. You'll be living with me for the foreseeable future."  
I turned to look at her, "Listen, Amy. Don't think I don't appreciate your help and all but I'm not into that sort of thing. Not that I have nothing against it, two of my best friends are lesbians..."  
"I am not interested in you for sex," she said so severely it actually kinda hurt. A girl does like to feel wanted after all.

"As for your friends, you must consider yourself dead to them. They cannot be allowed to learn your true nature. I'll not have a fledgling running around telling her friends all about Kindred society."  
"Do I look like an idiot to you?" I snapped. I got out and slammed the door shut. Amy met my eyes from over the car roof. "Let us go inside," she said. It was half an hour until dawn.

The inside of the apartment looked as though it hadn't been redecorated since the eighties. The early eighties. Old wallpaper was starting to peel from the walls and the carpet, a truly hideous green shagpile was dull and faded and worn almost bare by the passage of feet. The kitchen was all lumpy green linoleum and laminated cupboards.

The only concessions to modernity were the 60 inch plasma TV on one wall, the home theatre setup and the laptop on the kitchen table. "I'll show you to your room," Amy led me to the spare bedroom. Apart from the single bed, chest of drawers and an old chair, it was pretty empty. "Your clothes are in the drawers."  
I turned to her incredulous, "You broke into my place while I was out of it and _stole my clothes?"_

"Two things: one, the door was opened with the key in your purse and two, I sent an associate to gather your things."  
"Oh well, I guess it's alright then!" Arrogant vampire cow.

"Don't worry about the sunlight getting in, all the windows are sealed. She pulled aside the curtain to reveal wooden boards over the windows. The boards were painted black. "Why have curtains at all then?"  
"The boards are ugly," Amy said. I thought about pointing out the state of the rest of the place and then just shrugged.  
"Don't people notice the windows from outside and get curious?"  
"Everybody living in this neighbourhood is either one of us or a mortal in our service. We shall have no problems with tourists."

"Well isn't _that _a relief."

"I'll see you tomorrow night. We'll go hunting."  
"For what, quail? Oh, _that_ kind of hunting."

She left and I closed the door behind her. Here's something interesting. Behind the door rested a matte black pump action shotgun, twelve gauge. I picked it up and racked the slide. Empty. Of course. I started going through the drawers looking for some shells. My dad had shown me around his small arsenal of weapons. He was in the NRA but not one of those survivalist nuts who think the government's about to collapse and it's their god-given duty to have enough guns to start the apocalypse.

I heard Amy's footsteps coming back. The door opened and she stood there glaring at me, "I'll take that thankyou."  
"Hey and when you come back, bring me some shells!" She didn't answer.

I needed a shower. I reeked of tobacco smoke and stale Impulse deodorant. I checked my watch. It must be past dawn by now, why wasn't in a coma or something?

I shrugged and went looking for the bathroom. "Gonna be in the tub for a while," I called. Again, no answer. She wanted the silent treatment? Fine.

I ran myself a nice hot bath. While the tub was filling I looked at myself in the mirror. My skin had gone pale. Corpse pallor, I'd heard it called. Well, technically, weren't vampires the walking dead after all? My lips seemed to be redder than usual as though somebody had gone nuts with the crimson lipstick while I was out of it. I peeled back my lips and inspected my teeth. Oh yeah, there they were, hello little fangs.

I tilted my head to one side and held my long black hair out of the way. A pair of small holes, what just had to be fang marks were in the side of my neck. I ran a finger over them, the fingertip dipping into the little hollows left in my flesh. Bastard.

I washed my face in the sink and as I did so, a wild thought occurred to me: I was seeing my reflection.

In a mirror.

Obviously, some commonly held vampire beliefs were utter shit. Before I went to bed for the night...morning, I decided I'd make a list of vampire myths and see what was what.

Finished with the bath, I wrapped a bathrobe around myself. Amy's most likely. She'd likely be pissed about that. Meh, she'd live. Or unlive. Or whatever.

I sat on the bed in my room. Amy had thoughtfully provided a pad and pen along with my stolen clothes. Shaking my head, I wrote

Mythbusters: Vampire Special Edition. What can I say, I love that show and Adam Savage is freaking hilarious.

Myth 1. Vampires can't see their reflections. Obviously I'd already busted that one so I crossed it out.

Myth 2. Vampires are burned by silver. Wait isn't that werewolves? If _they_ even exist. Luckily for me, my necklace and ankle bracelet were both silver. And I was still alive! Or is that undead? That's two down.

Myth 3. Vampires can't cross running water. Yeah right, tell that to the chick who just came out of the bath.

Myth 4. The cross. We've all seen those Dracula flicks where Van Helsing makes the Count back up with his trusty wooden cross. My necklace had a small crucifix on it. Again, I was still alive! Or undead.

Myth 5. Exposure to sunlight. I looked at the boarded up blacked out windows and there was Amy's insistence on getting inside before dawn. I put that one down as confirmed.

What else? Stake through the heart? Yeah, like I was going to find a stake and hammer myself through the chest with it. Likewise cutting off my head and stuffing it with garlic.

Garlic! Of course, the classic vampire myth. I called out, breaking my vow of silence after just twenty minutes, "Hey Aims! Do we have any garlic?"  
Still nothing. Maybe she was sleeping. I got up and went to find her. I could hear the slow beating of her heart in the room up the hall. She was asleep, all right. Lying on the bed, no coffin. 'nother myth down. Though maybe in the old days, vampires had to use coffins to sleep in when they were away from towns and cities.

I walked over to her. Her hands were crossed over her chest and she seemed dead to the world. Heh, dead. I placed a hand on her shoulder and shook her gently. Nothing. I peeled back an eyelid. The eye didn't even twitch. If I felt like it, I could have worked off some of my tension by beating her senseless and she'd likely never even know. That seemed like a fatal weakness for a vamp.

Instead I went back to my room and slept.

My eyes snapped open the next night and I came to full wakefulness just like that: one moment comatose and then bang, I'm awake and my mind is blade-sharp. This was something of a new experience. Normally when I roll out of bed around noon, it takes my mind a while to quit idling and fire up all cylinders. I could actually get to like this vampire shit.

Amy was sitting in the chair, apparently having been watching me sleep.

"At some point, you and I are going to have a little chat regarding boundaries," I said.

"This from the girl who's wearing my bathrobe and used up all of my lavender oil in the bath."

I shrugged. "So what's on the agenda for tonight? Girls' night in? Kick back and watch Desperate Housewives?"  
"You and I are going to Hunt," she said hunt in such a way that you could hear the capitalisation. "Also, I will instruct you in the ways of our kind, as requested by the Prince."

"I'm sorry, isn't this the USA? Didn't we fight a war of independence? The royal family come back when I was sleeping?"  
I should have kept my mouth shut. For the next fifteen minutes, she went on and on about the structure of the Camarilla and how the Prince, a three hundred year old Tremere had recently wrested control of the city from the Anarchs. Who apparently were still quite ticked off about the whole thing.

"Also, you will need these," she reached under her jacket and removed a butterfly knife and a .45 calibre semi-automatic. Black, like the shotgun. "I'm supposed to kill somebody with these?" I asked as I took the knife, as I practised flicking the blade out and loaded the pistol.

"These nights are not safe at the moment," was all she said.

She stood up and, as she turned to leave, saw the list of myths from the night before. She picked it up and ran a finger down it. "I see you are not content to simply allow the perpetuation of myths and superstition. Too many of our kind are blinded by legends of old, the fools."

"Yeah, well I was bored."

She left and I quickly dressed. I figured the gun and knife wouldn't go well with the little frilly dress that my hands first pulled out. Instead I pulled on a black pair of jeans, dark blue T-shirt and my own leather jacket. My old running shoes completed the outfit. I looked at myself in the mirror. Fairly tall, long black hair, blue eyes, ruby lips and corpse pale skin. I looked like a fucking goth.

Oh the joy.

In the living room, Amy was pulling on her jacket and holstering her handcannon. It looked suspiciously like a Desert Eagle. "Where does a person get one of those around here?"

"Oh, we have our ways. Ways and means."

We left the rundown apartment and headed down the rundown hallway to the stairs. The elevator had been busted for at least five years. Debt collectors liked to hang people who owed them money from the ankles over the lift shaft. More than a few had been 'accidentally' dropped the four floors to the lobby. Lounging against the hallway up ahead was the same coke dealer from the other night.

"Hey Aims," he called out, "who's your new girlfriend?"  
"Go fuck yourself," I snarled as we passed. He didn't seem to like that and pulled a blade.  
"Nobody talks like that to me and lives," I swear to God, that's what he said. I rolled my eyes. Amy merely stood off to one side, wanting to see how I'd handle things. Did I really want to slaughter this guy right here in the hallway? Um, no.

Instead I let my new-found instincts take over, got him into a headlock and cut off his air until he passed out. I took his knife and threw down the lift shaft.

"Why didn't you finish him off?" Amy asked.

"Thought you might not appreciate having the cops rock up at your door. Or his strung out customers."  
"He won't accept you treating him like that. He's a mindless idiot but determined. I almost admire that," she said. I shrugged. If he tried anything else, maybe I'd blow off his kneecaps.

We arrived at the car park and got into the Chevy. As Amy roared off, I asked, "Where are we going?"  
"There's a public park where all manner of lowlife congregate. Drug dealers, perverts stalking co-eds, the occasional mass murderer. We'll find somebody for you to feed on and maybe somebody will step out of line and you can show off your moves."  
"What makes you think I have moves?"  
"The way you handled our crack-head friend earlier. Most people would have just submitted meekly and been beaten to death."

After driving in silence for a while, Amy pulled the car off the road beneath a busted streetlight. We got out and crossed the road to the park. The sign, riddled with bullet holes, read Memorial Park. I could dimly see a statue of a soldier in the middle of the park. As well as a number of people passing a liquor bottle around.

"This way." Amy led me deeper into the shadows. My night vision adjusted and it was quite a bit easier to see than usual. A young woman was walking by herself through the park towards us. Big mistake, that, walking by yourself this time of night in a place like this. Anything could be waiting in the shadows for you.

Like me, for instance. I could hear the girl's heart pounding rapidly and almost feel the rush of her blood through her veins.

"Wait until she gets closer," Amy murmured.

The girl slipped into the shadows, coming closer. The poor thing had no idea we were even there.

"Now," Amy urged, "Go. One other thing, don't drain her dry."  
"Now you tell me."

I circled behind the girl, a pretty blonde thing about 19 and moved up silently behind her. My lips opened slightly and I could feel the fangs lengthen. Her instincts, long unused perked up, a rabbit sensing the fox. She turned, her hair whipping past her face and gasped.

I grabbed hold of her, forced her head back and darted my face forward. The blood was racing beneath the vein in her neck. Hello, darling.

She opened her mouth to scream but then moaned instead as my fangs pierced her skin. Funny, sounded almost as though she was getting off on it. I could feel her heart pounding and drank until I could feel it slow. Then I forced the hunger down and it went reluctantly, like an attack dog straining at the leash. Something inside me really wanted me to drain her until she was a dried up husk. That something scared me.

The girl was swaying on her feet. I grasped her gently by the shoulders and lowered her to the ground. She was soon sleeping peacefully. Amy had moved up beside me and said, "You did well. I could feel you fight down the Beast."  
"What?" I said as I turned to her.

"The Beast is what we call our darker, predatory natures. We must make sure not to let it rule us or we become nothing more than wild animals and wild animals must be put down."

"Right. What about Sleeping Beauty here?" The girl had a slight smile on her face. "I don't want to leave her here. Pretty thing like, that she'd likely wake up dead."

Amy looked down at the girl, considering. "We'll bring her back to the car," she decided, "Leave her somewhere safe."

Amy looked at me. "Pick her up."  
"Oh come on!" But I complied. The girl felt as though she weighed nothing. Enhanced vampire strength, baby. Dig it.

We headed back to the car and I laid her on the back seats. Soon we arrived outside an all night cafe. The girl was beginning to come around by this time. I got out, opened the rear doors and lifted her out. Her eyelids were fluttering as I laid her in one of the cafe's outdoor seats. She slumped over the table.

We left just as she was coming around.

"Will she remember what happened?"  
"No. And coming to in a strange place will give her enough to think about."

I looked at my watch. It was only ten PM. "What now? Do we just drive around?"  
"We must meet with the Prince. He has a task for you."

"Oh goody." The word 'task' reminded me that I had an actual place of work I should have been at this morning. "What about my job? They're gonna want to know where I am."  
"An email has been sent to them announcing your resignation."  
"You might have at least asked me before doing that."

She said nothing, merely cranked the car up to 65 and headed into town. Soon we arrived at a high-rise building that was one of many in the city with nothing to distinguish it from the others. She got out and told me to follow. Sir, yes sir.

The lobby of the building was empty this time of night. As was the elevator. Amy removed a small key from her pocket, inserted it into a slot on the elevator panel and twisted it. The elevator shot up to the penthouse level. Fancy.

The doors hissed open and we found ourselves at one end of a long hallway. The hallway was a featureless expanse painted an off white. Black and white tiles covered the floor and our heels clicked as we walked. At the end of the hall was a solid oak door. With a lion's head knocker. How quaint.

Amy rapped on the door. Soon a voice said simply, "Come."  
We came.

The room was furnished with Greco-Roman statues, erotic photography, an antique globe of the world and a suit of medieval armour. Hanging on the wall above it were a number of what looked like actual medieval weapons: a great sword, a spear, pike, battle axes.

The man who had bade us enter, the Prince I suppose was standing with his back to us, gazing out the windows at the city laid out beneath us. It was quite a view.

The man turned to us. He was dressed in the sort of pin-striped suit you may have seen in mob movies. He had an accent I couldn't place. Something eastern European.

Amy actually curtsied. Now that was an odd sight, a modern seeming woman in modern clothes, curtsying to a guy who looked as though he'd watched The Godfather too many times. Amy glared at me until I got the hint.

I curtsied as well. What the fuck was this?

The man, vampire rather greeted us. "Welcome back, Amy. I trust your latest duties have not been too a great a burden on you?"  
He meant me. Bless her, Amy shook her head, "No, she is a quick study and appears to be in control of her Beast."  
Damn right I was. Though 'Beast' sounded so generic. I decided to call it Theodore. No reason, really, the name just came to me.

The man-vampire-prince-whatever extended a hand. I took it. Instead of shaking it he raised it to his lips and kissed the back of it. Oh my God. I raised an eyebrow.

"Greetings. I am Viktor," you could just hear 'k' in his name. He didn't offer a last one. Probably he'd be alive or undead or whatever so long, he'd forgotten it.

"And you are Morgan," he said, stating the obvious. "I do apologise for the rather abrupt ushering into our way of life you have had to experience thus far,"  
"O..K," I said. Ushering in? Who talks like that?

"You'll have to forgive young Morgan here. These young ones are all full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," Amy said. As though I wasn't there. Nice.

"No apologies are necessary," Viktor said and gestured for us to sit in a pair of leather armchairs. The kind that reclined and massaged your butt as well.

I sat and resisted the urge to recline the chair to the horizontal position and fire up the butt massagers but it was a close thing.

Viktor sat behind his massive wooden desk that appeared to have been hewn from a single hunk of wood at some point in the distant past. He steepled his fingers and said, "There are alarming reports coming in of a Kindred who has embarked on a series of rapes and murders in our fair city. This is bad enough but his actions are a risk to the Masquerade. As such, he must be stopped."  
Fair city was stretching the truth a bit but still, if you overlooked the drug dealers, gang bangers, corrupt traffic cops and over abundance of Ikea stores, it wasn't so bad. But this thing about a raping and murdering vampire? I had a feeling I knew where things were headed next.

I raised a hand like a child in school. Viktor nodded to me, "Let me guess, you want me to track down your murderous rapist vampire and shove a stake in him?"  
"Basically yes."  
"Right," said I, "Why me? I've been a vampire for five minutes and never killed anybody. How do you know I simply won't freak out and fuck everything up?" Amy glared at me. I shrugged. Amy answered, "To be perfectly honest, this will serve as a trial to determine if you are fit to join our society."  
Hazing ritual, a frigging vampire hazing ritual. Give me a break.

"What if I fail? You gonna take me outside and shoot me in the head?"

"We were hoping to avoid that, there are far too few of us these nights to have us killing our own," said Viktor.

"Look, I assume you know who this guy is and where to find him so why not just send one of your more experienced vamps," I flicked a hand at Amy, "and have them take care of it?"  
"Because I am asking you to do it, not them," Viktor said with a hint of steel in his voice. I could tell I wasn't going to get any rest until I agreed. So I agreed.

Viktor filled us in on the victims so far: all had been college girls living in the area, all were between the ages of 18 and 20 and all had, wait for it, long blonde hair, blue eyes and the kind of body that wouldn't look out of place in a Penthouse centrefold. What is with serial murderers and blondes? I thought about that girl I had fed from earlier. I'd probably saved her life, getting her out of that park. Hoped she gotten home OK.

"Fine, fine. I'll find the guy and off him for you. Now, what's the best way to kill a vampire? I am so not going to go and buy a stake and mallet."  
"Fire. Fire always works well," Viktor answered. Amy nodded. I made a note to pick up some spraycans and a Zippo. Hoped I wouldn't torch myself.

"What else?"  
"Bladed weapons work very well, if you can strike an artery, they will bleed out as fast as a human."

"So creep up on the guy and slit his throat? I could probably do that."  
"Also gunfire will work. Although vampires are quite resilient to bullets."  
"Resilient how?"  
Amy answered the question, "I have personally seen Kindred take dozens of bullets to the chest before falling. Shotguns at to the head at close range, however."

I remembered the twelve-gauge in the apartment. That I could work with.

Viktor handed me a handwritten name and address. Presumably the location of our homicidal vampire. Viktor's handwriting was calligraphy that was actually quite pretty to look at.

"It can't be a simple as rocking up to his place and finding him there. If this guy has half a brain, he's gone into hiding by now."  
"It will be a place to begin. Now you must depart."


	4. Fountaining Blood

4. Fountaining blood

Back in the elevator, Amy announced, "I will accompany you. Just in case you freak out and fuck everything up," Look, an actual joke. "Also you will need weapons. I know a person who can help."  
Goodie. Amy's person turned out to be jive-talking African American guy who called himself G.

He was dressed like a wannabe gangster but his old GMC truck was filled with the kind of hardware you'd expect to see in the hands of the US Marine Corps. Hoo-ra!

"What's crackin' bitches?" G. said in apparent greeting.

"What'll be crackin' is your head if you keep jerking me around," I snapped. Do vamps get PMS, I wondered.

"Yo, there ain't no need for that, sista. I's just saying what up, a'ight?"  
"Sure, whatever. I understand you have some...illegal firearms for sale?"  
"Now I am offended! There ain't nothing illegal 'bout my firearms. The constitution says it's a right to bear arms!"

Eventually we got down to business. I wasn't quite sure what to expect from the target, a Gangrel called George Perry, so I bought myself an M3 tactical shotgun with a capacity of 8 shells and a Kevlar vest that kinda-sorta fit under my jacket. I already had the knife and .45 Amy had given me but I decided to buy some more mags for the pistol.

"Say, you wouldn't happen to know a guy called George Perry by chance?" I asked. A guy like this had to have heard something, I thought.

"That crazy motherfucker? Lemme tell you sumthin, that cracker owes me for twenty grams of blow! I heard he hangin' out over at the warehouses down by the pier."

"Well, I'm looking for him and if I find him, I'll bring what he owes you."

Amy and I got back to the car. I checked my watch. It was past twelve. Dawn wasn't for another five and half hours. I figured that was plenty of time to at least do some preliminary legwork. We headed to the pier, Highway to Hell playing on the radio. The warehouse district was a haven for homeless people who pushed their rusty shopping trolleys piled high with their possessions along the side of the road. We sat in the car for a while, the radio off and observed things. Aside from the homeless folks, there didn't seem to be much activity. Then we sighted a figure in the distance dragging something that looked quite a bit like a young woman after him.

My but this fellow was bold, wasn't he?  
"That's our guy, I'm betting."  
"Could be," Amy replied. "Either way, that girl won't be joining the others."

We got out and headed towards the pair. Faintly I could hear the girl screaming. The man answered in a voice that was more animalistic grunt, "Shut up, you little whore!"

I gripped the M3 tightly and racked the slide, loading a shell into it. lt made an impressive metallic clicking sound.

The distinctive sound of a shotgun being pumped carried over to the man and woman. She twisted in his grip and screamed for help. The man, a heavily muscled guy slapped her. Her head whipped around and she fell heavily to the ground.

Beside me, Amy had her gun out in a two handed grip and fired. The blast was a lot louder than it sounds in the movies. The bullet hit the guy in the head, snapping it back. He merely straightened up and walked slowly towards us, the bullet hole beginning to close up. Oh damn. Behind him the girl rose unsteadily to her feet and ran to the dubious safety of a warehouse building.

I shouldered the M3 and fired. The blast caught him full in the chest, shredding his shirt and knocking him backward. I worked the slide and fired again, moving closer. He staggered back a little more. Beside me Amy kept firing until her mag was empty. He jerked slightly with each impact. As she reloaded, I fired again. Five shots left. Claws suddenly sprouted from his hands and he ran at us. I blasted him again but he kept coming.

"Fuck this for a joke," I said and shot him point blank in the face. He still wouldn't go down. He grabbed me with his clawed hands, lifted me into the air and threw me. I sailed through the air and saw, in slow motion, Amy burning another clip into him. Then she was on the ground with clawed hands at her throat.

I landed heavily on the ground and managed to roll upright. The shotgun clattered next to me. Instead I reached for the knife, got to my feet and sprinted to Amy. By this time she was dangling in the air and her face was contorted. Her hands were gripping the Gangrel's wrist but she might as well have been trying to move a steel girder.

I slipped up behind him and rammed the blade into the side of his neck. A gout of high pressure blood shot out. He growled and dropped Amy. She immediately sprang back up and yanked the blade out then rammed it in again.

Finally, with arterial blood fountaining in all directions, the vamp fell and went still. I unholstered the .45 and pumped a round into his forehead for good measure.

"Please tell me he's dead," I looked at Amy. Her clothing was torn and claws had marked her throat. Behind me the body combusted into flame and nothing was left by a pile of ash vaguely shaped like a man.

I rolled my head around and felt my neck bones crackling.

"He is dead. We should see to his intended victim."  
"Oh yeah, like the sight of a couple of torn up gun toting chicks is really going to ease her mind."

I walked back to where I had landed and retrieved the shotgun. I absently reloaded the spent shells. In the distance I could police sirens. For a wonder, a law abiding citizen had heard the gunshots and called the local constabulary.

Closer, I could hear the frantic beating of a very scared young woman's heart. I walked to the warehouse door and looked in. The girl was crouched in the corner farthest from the entrance shaking like a leaf.

"Hey, it's OK, he can't hurt you anymore." I tried to reassure her.

She saw the gun in my hands and cried out again. I placed it carefully on the floor and held my empty hands up. It didn't seem to help much.

"Who...who are you?"  
"Not important. Look the cops are coming and they'll be able to look after you." I checked my watch. "I really need to get out of here." The sirens were getting closer. If I didn't get out of here right the fuck now, I'd be stuck in a police interview room when the sun came up. Which would be very bad, indeed.

The girl rose and ran to me, her fear apparently forgotten. She hugged me forcefully. "Thank you, he would have killed me for sure."  
Eventually I prised her off me and walked her outside. Amy was waiting by the car. "Will you be OK on your own?"  
"I'll be fine. Thank you again."

We got back to the Impala and hit the road just as the first police cruiser pulled up.

I looked to Amy, the claw marks had mostly healed by now. "Did I pass?"  
She merely smiled at me, put the Impala into gear and we roared off into the night.

The End.


End file.
